why do japanese children have to learn 3 alphabets?

Question

japanese languages, cultures

Answer 1

The Japanese Language has the following THREE different Scripts:

1.Katakana, 2. hiragana & 3. kanji each serving a unique purpose.

I. kanji is used to express an idea & to represent meaning in a VISUAL WAY (Pictograms)

II. When kanji was not appropriate for writing, 'hiragana' scripts were used.

It has Phonetic Alphabets (just 46 symbols) & it is used to writeGrammar parts & Sentences.

III. The third one is 'katakana' with just 45 phoneticAlphabets (symbols).

It is often used for representing non-Japanese words.--- the foreign words adopted into Japanese & the names of business houses, foreign names in advertisements etc etc.

So, the three scripts have different& definite purposes. So Japanese children & we, foreign learners, have to learn 3 scripts or 2 alphabets & 1 pictograms!

Answer 2

Because mastery of those 3 alphabets is necessary for functional literacy in japan. If you don't know them, you will have a hard time living there.

The reason why there are 3 alphabets is because the original script was borrowed from china, adapted once for syllaby and adapted again (originally by women who weren't allowed to learn writing) for use in phoneticising foreign words.

Answer 3

Japanese people only have to learn one alphabet, the English alphabet. When you say 3 alphabets, you are not referring to alphabets. Two of them are syllabaries (use a dictionary) and one is a character set.

Answer 4

Becaues modern Japanese uses three main scripts:
Kanji, characters of Chinese origin,
Hiragana, a syllabary, and
Katakana, a syllabary.

In fact there is a fourth which is the Roman alphabet which is also known as Romaji.

Answer 5

because they have three writing types:

HIRAGANA: used for children, easier to learn , composed for about 48 symbols, which is able to write everything.

KATAKANA: used to write words that have been adopted by japanese from another languages, also has about 48 symbols.

KANJI: the chinese symbols. it is the most difficult alphabet to learn, japanese people sometimes have also problems to write with it. It has about 10.000 symbols!!

Answer 6

Education is VERY important in Japan. Maybe the western world should take a few of their points.

Answer 7

more than that right?